Top 12 Storage Companies in 2013

#1 EMC, #2 WD, #3 Seagate
By Jean-Jacques Maleval on 2014.02.19

Global revenue of Top 12 Storage Companies increased 5% from 2012 to 2013, compared to 10% from 2011 to 2012. The worldwide storage market took a pause in 2013 with decline in storage subsystems and software, confirmed IDC.

As we wrote previously, the real winners are not the storage giants but smaller companies and start-ups with more innovative hardware and software.

EMC continues to be #1 in storage. It's the case since 2004 but with a small growth in 2013 (4%), like in 2012. Rival NetApp is also growing slightly, +2% in 2012 and in 2013, compared to 22% in 2011.

WD took the second position from Seagate but this ranking could eventually change in 2014 as Seagate is acquiring $814 million UK firm Xyratex.

In bad shape in storage, IBM, without Tivoli software business, is positioned as #7 in 2013 and was #5 in 2012.

WD records the highest percentage of growth last year with 22% thanks to the acquisition of HGST. 2003 was a remarkable period for SanDisk (+22%) in the growing market of solid-state technology.

In this Top 12 list, firms offering storage and servers were one more the big losers from 2012 to 2013: Dell -13%, IBM -10%, HP -9%, the exception being Hitachi/HDS +3%.

LSI (-5%) will not be probably in the list next year following its acquisition last December by Avago for $6.6 billion, as we are not sure that Avago will publish separately the figures of LSI in the future.

All Top 12 companies record more than $2 billion in revenue but Dell ($1.7 billion).

Top 12 in Storage Revenue in $ million in FY13

2013 ranking

2012 ranking

Vendors

FY ending in (mo)

2011

2012

2013

2012/2013 growth

1

1

EMC *

12

14,755

15,440

16,132

4%

2

3

WD

6

9,526

12,478

15,351

23%

3

2

Seagate

6

10,971

14,939

14,351

-4%

4

4

Micron

8

8,788

8,234

9,073

10%

5

6

NetApp

4

5,123

6,233

6,332

2%

6

7

SanDisk

12

5,662

5,053

6,170

22%

7

5

IBM * & **

12

6,787

6,500

5,850

-10%

8

8

HDS + Japan

3

3,864

4,443

4,559

3%

9

9

HP *

10

4,056

3,815

3,475

-9%

10

11

Symantec *

3

2,307

2,412

2,479

3%

11

10

LSI

12

2,044

2,506

2,370

-5%

12

12

Dell *

1

2,295

1,943

1,699

-13%

TOTAL

76,178

83,996

87,841

5%

(Compilation by StorageNewsletter.com)* storage only** estimate, and without Tivoli software

Comments for three Asian companies: Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba:

For Hitachi, we only rank here wholly-owned subsidiary HDS (including storage systems sold in Japan). But the Japanese group has two other storage activities: wholly-owned subsidiary Hitachi Maxell in storage media and the joint venture Hitachi-LG storage with LG in optical disc drives not included here.

Samsung, no more in HDDs, could merit to be included in the Top 12 but the company does not precisely publish revenue in NAND flash chips and SSDs. The only figure we got: for calendar year 2013, these two activities, including DRAM, registered sales of KRW 37.44 trillion ($35 billion), +7% from the former annual period.

It also not easy to get numbers from Toshiba involved HDDs, SSDs, flash chips, and optical disc products. We just learned that it recorded ¥1,335 billion yens in FY13 ended March 2013 (-7% from 2012) in semiconductor and storage products, the equivalent of around $13.1 billion.

Notes:

Here storage is defined as the activity of recording and retrieving computer data using any form of digital devices (based on magnetic, tape, optical, non volatile solid-state - not RAM -, and subsystems) including all associated connectivity, software and services.

For this ranking we used the companies' financial results for their fiscal year 2013 - not the calendar year - ending in any month of 2013. We got official figures, no estimations - but for IBM - for all of them and for storage only.

Historically, here are the winners' circle since 1991:

?1

?2

?3

1991

IBM Adstar

Seagate

Memorex Telex

1992

IBM Adstar

Seagate

Conner

1993

IBM SSD

Seagate

Conner

1994

IBM SSD

Seagate

Quantum

1995

Seagate

IBM SSD

Quantum

1996

Seagate

Quantum

WD

1997

Seagate

Quantum

Compaq

1998

Seagate

Quantum

Compaq

1999

Seagate

EMC

Quantum

2000

EMC

Seagate

Maxtor

2001

EMC

Seagate

Maxtor

2002

Seagate

EMC

Maxtor

2003

Seagate

EMC

Hitachi GST

2004

EMC

Seagate

BenQ

2005

EMC

Seagate

Hitachi GST

2006

EMC

Seagate

Hitachi GST

2007

EMC

Seagate

Hitachi GST

2008

EMC

Seagate

WD

2009

EMC

Seagate

WD

2010

EMC

Seagate

WD

2011

EMC

Seagate

WD

2012

EMC

Seagate

WD

2013

EMC

WD

Seagate

(Source: StorageNewsletter.com)

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